Yoozer

If the gods choose to smile on me I'm getting this Tuesday or Wednesday.

You don't have to apologize for that .

Yeah, but what's your goal? What do you want to do with it? If you use a sequencer on your computer it's completely superfluous. Pretty much every computer-based sequencer beats what's on a keyboard into a pulp. That said, the sequencers on keyboards and workstations are much more 'direct' in operation; no shortcuts, no menus, no distracting stuff. It's probably the best to see "sending" on a computer and "sending" on a keyboard as different terms . If you store what you have played on the keyboard (as a MIDI file, because all song formats used for keyboards are pretty obscure) and then open it again on the computer, you will have 'sent' what you have played. If you don't do it like that, the keyboard will happily pump out MIDI information, and since your sequencer program will most likely record only a single MIDI track at a time, it'll receive all the stuff. So you will have to do it part by part. If you know what hoops you had to jump through on earlier sequencers (determine tempo, quantizing, beat count, length, start, stop - that's the worst case scenario by the way), that's indeed easy . Dual and split will not make much difference when sending, but much more with receiving and playing on the keyboard itself. "Split" simply means "ignore the MIDI notes if they are below the middle C" (or above the middle C, where middle C can be an arbitrarily chosen split point). "Layer" means that 2 presets "listen" to the same information. The information is only sent once, though, and the only discrimination is made on the side of the receiver. Also, yes, for $200 you can get quite a number of older synthesizers on the secondhand market, it just depends on what you want to do with it.

Actually I don't. Why withhold relevant information from people just because your thirst for knowledge is quenched? After reading how CDs still use 16-bit audio, I'm not . No, you should get something because you can use it right now. You can wait for 32-bit and 64-bit recording but in the meantime you won't record anything. Besides, if you want to leverage that power to the fullest, also think of buying an expensive microphone to go with it. Now you can pick the Fostex and a pretty good mic for the rest of the cash. The article hasn't been updated in a while and 5 years in computer terms are an immense timespan. There's a very simple reason to choose 24 bits over 16 bits - dynamics. Again, keep in mind - what you're going to do with it and on what level of professionalism you're working, and what your budget is. Proprietary format + shitty compression; rather give me the compact flash with a plain .wav on it, then . With all due respect for MDs though; it's a really good replacement for tape.

Because stuff like this costs money. In your opinion of course. In your opinion of course. Anyway, Cikira's a really nice woman, and pretty much every forum her studio pops up at gets combined waves of "wtf" and envy. Since when can you predict workflow, creativity, or talent, just by seeing a single photograph?

Bling bling: http://www.zzounds.com/item--TASDP01 (probably the most bang for the buck) http://www.zzounds.com/item--FOSMR8 (beats the Tascam because it's got proper XLR mic inputs). http://www.zzounds.com/item--ZOMPS04 (really insanely compact). Pretty good how these things have become better, cheaper, and have shrunken during the years.

Aussie dollars != US dollars. Import costs. *poof* and gone is the advantage. A PSR with a decent polyphony count is going to help this guy more than an Alpha Juno or a cheapo Ensoniq, especially for piano.

A Yamaha PSR might help you for a while. Forget sampling for your budget. Really, you will not get this in the keyboard itself. Much more than that . 200 AUD is 124 euros. You can barely get a controller keyboard for that here (no sounds, USB hookup), and Australia is much more expensive if you want new gear. As I said, a PSR, and then get some secondhand MIDI interface, and try to make do with what's available as free software out there. What genre? Do keep in mind that you'll have to do a lot of repetitions to clean up the rust.

What sgx said; maybe your soundcard just sucks. Nah, I'm kidding. See if the stuff at www.asio4all.com can solve your problem. Or otherwise, the guy at http://www.asio2ks.de seems to be doing something similar. It's not because of the CPU load; it's because your soundcard does not support a certain standard (WDM or ASIO).

What about mLAN? Is that not set to replace MIDI eventually? I don't know much about it myself. mLAN is regular MIDI + audio, bidirectional, on a single cable.

These are indeed plugins. Seeing as they're free, relatively uncomplex, one should not have problems substituting for the other. It's that or getting something like E-mu's Emulator X, which costs more but comes with an audio interface .

You really do not want to do this - you will want to leave this job to the software sampler itself. Besides, there's free softsamplers, too. http://www.kvraudio.com/get/156.html http://www.kvraudio.com/get/196.html http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1388.html It doesn't matter that much what they're in; you'll be off better with adjusting this with the software sampler's "fine tune" parameters.

GS? GS is an extended GM standard, just like XG is. The MIDI signals at the bottom are still standard. Enhanced MIDI would be something like OSC, or HD-MIDI. http://www.midi.org/newsviews/hdmidipr2.shtml http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/ Balderdash; it's an old wives' tale and in order to do this he had to sacrifice his firstborn. No, I'm kidding. You don't record the MIDI, you record what comes out of the sound outputs of the XG device. The XG device can be anything; a synthesizer, a soundcard, a module, as long as they contain the sample set for XG. http://www.smellymonkey.com/qy70/ < that thing's got the XG soundset. There should also be an XG softsynth, but count on it that any dedicated software sampler with a good sample set will blow it away.

You can of course make your own stuff. However - in order to sample directly from an N64, it's probably better if you use an emulator. Some emulators allow you to disable and enable music tracks, which allows you to grab a single instrument or melody line which you can use. No, it's possible; but it is generally a plugin that is able to sample, not a sequencer. Another way; sample your stuff with a wave editor, and process it; then import the .wav into the software sampler.

Not the right question to ask. I could name some brands but 'good' is of course completely relative. What is your budget? On basis of that, get the best money can buy you.

You don't enhance MIDI - you no longer use the default General MIDI sounds (samples) on your soundcard (also called "wavetable"). Get yourself Reason or FL Studio, throw in some nice VSTs in FL Studio or Refill packs in Reason and you're done. MIDI is to sound as a sheet with score is to tape. One describes what you should play without caring who is playing it; the other describes exactly what was played but does not explain to you how it was done. MIDI does not "sound like crap"; your soundcard's default wavetable synthesizer does. Therefore, you don't have to enhance MIDI.

I did this with a track, and it's not 100% - but you can get close. It's very important that you have both versions on CD (uncompressed) as opposed to mp3, because mp3 ruins the sound. If the track has a short silence before it starts, just putting one inverted wave on top of the other is not going to work either - the recording might've been off just enough to ruin things. The wave editor I use (Sound Forge) allows you to "snap" to a point on the waveform. If you zoom in to the highest level you'll see a series of dots. The trick is to find a sudden recognizable peak in the songs and use that point as a kind of guide. Also, if both tracks are on 16 bit and both tracks are mastered - convert them to 24 bit first. You'll have more headroom and less chances clipping that way. Then, after putting 'm on top of eachother like zircon described, dither back to 16 bit again.

In that case, get good headphones first if you're not on a big budget and value portability. This subject has also been discussed so search and you shall find something useful . 5.1 sets aren't useful for 2.0 music. Most computer speaker sets also place emphasis on the bass and high so whatever music you make might sound great on the speaker set and absolutely horrendous on anything else. Good headphones will be cheaper than studio monitors and portable, and the imaging will be better.

You'll need a good audio interface, and working with a laptop this means either an USB 2.0 or FireWire interface. PCMCIA is also possible, but it's not as common anymore. Your laptop needs to have enough internal memory. 512 is a minimum; 1gb is recommended. It's a good idea to dedicate it to making music; having anti-virus and anti-spyware programs running in the back is disastrous for the performance. No, just all the sticky threads.

*shrug* Just check out Ishkur, see what matches the best. http://www.di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html

You can find all this here in the sticky topics. If English is not your strongest point, translation would be an option; learning English would be better. There's simply a wealth of material available in English which is impossible to translate correctly that fast. I'm Dutch. A Dutch remix guide would be nice, too, but since the language isn't really that popular I'll have to improve my English. In that case I wouldn't look here but on generic German music production forums. Please start with this: forget the idea that there's somehow special knowledge or equipment needed to make remixes as opposed to any other kind of music. Yes, certain equipment will help you to achieve a certain goal faster. Certain instruments are not used in certain kinds of music. Remixing however as a 'style' is not unique or radically different. So, if you visit such a music production forum, don't say you want to remix (nobody understands this unless they're familiar with this site) - say you have x euros, you currently have a computer and software package y, can you recommend something that's good for making sound z. That'll work a lot better. You might check out http://forum.keyboards.de/forum.html (currently down), or http://www.synthesizerforum.de/synthesizer/index.php (specific for (vintage) synthesizers). As you might've noticed most people use something other than that, mainly because Magix Music Maker is a connect-the-dots play-with-Lego kind of application that will not allow you the freedom other sequencers do. Just listen. A remix of a NES song with realistic instruments doesn't use any "material" from the original song; you listen to the melody and then play it again on guitar, piano, or whatever. What's your budget? See, I hate it when people do this. Is it pure laziness? I don't get this. If someone asked the same question but omitted that they wanted the information in English, people'd be screaming "READ THE STICKY TOPICS" (and rightfully so - or not?). Trying? Yeah, probably, but it was a weak try. Something like "Yeah, go to http://www.ocremix.de/wiemacheicheinremixaufdeutsch.pdf " would've scored higher on the asshole scale, plus a modifier bonus because of creativity . Sometimes people like to, oh.. I don't know. See someone else do the same effort they have done in order to get to know something . After all, OCRemix is quite meritocratic; it's what you achieve that determines your status. Heralded remixers most likely wouldn't have gotten far if they substituted forums for search engines. It's also not like they were born with the silver spoon of remixing knowledge in their mouths .

Your interface doesn't have any blinkenlights? Your keyboard has a MIDI out and a MIDI in. Your interface has a MIDI out and a MIDI in. Contrary to what the labels say, the computer's MIDI out should go in the keyboard's MIDI in. Imagine a highway - 2 lanes. One has traffic coming towards you, the other traffic drives away from you. Away from you means IN, towards you means OUT. Hence, hook up 2 INs to eachother and stuff will crash. Use MIDI-OX (www.midiox.com) to check if stuff is actually coming in. What sequencer do you use? You will not need an external MIDI module if your laptop's soundcard has a so-called "wavetable synth". It shows up as earlier said, the Microsoft GM Wavetable synth. External MIDI modules range from a mere $50 to $lots- Yamaha's got modules in the MU-series: http://cgi.ebay.com/YAMAHA-MU-50-MU50-MIDI-GM-XG-Sound-Module-Synthesizer_W0QQitemZ7388198079QQcategoryZ64387QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Roland has the JV-1010 which is really cheap; you should even be able to go lower than that but you'll sacrifice operability and quality. Try reinstalling the drivers of your soundcard, too, and consult the Cakewalk Manual. Pretty much every software synthesizer out there is able to beat an onboard MIDI synth into pulp. Speaking of which - do the softsynths work? After all, they also receive MIDI; just not via the cable but internally.

First tip : make your topictitle sensible. Instead of giving moderators a good reason to lock your topic, ask "What MIDI sequencers should I check out?" (or "composing programs" if you didn't know what a sequencer was). Second tip: don't make it look like you're asking a frequently asked question. You'll come off as ignorant and that doesn't any good for the number of people who are willing to help you (it shrinks to a few grumpy oldtimers like me). None. Everyone works differently. All that matters is 1) your budget and 2) what you work with comfortably. Steinberg (Cubase), Ableton (Live), FL Studio all have trials for you to download. Try them. Work with them. Find out which allows you to make your song the quickest with the least hassles. I have Cubase SX3. It'll be useless to you if you can't afford it or don't want to adapt to its ways because it differs in a lot of points with earlier versions. Are you comfortable with Cubasis? Do you feel like you're missing out on something? Are the answers "No" and "No", just stick with what you have and use the money for more useful purposes. Good - 5 VST is already older, so that might be reason to upgrade, but that's the only reason I can think of, and only if the things you want to do in 5 aren't possible for you at the moment. Upgrading just so you can see the latest version number is useless.

Not an industry standard, I guess. No; they're just industry standards . I wouldn't think so. See, Soundfonts are essentially nothing but a particular kind of sample libraries. A sample can have a volume change during the time applied by the 'engine' itself. It can be put through filters and the parameters of the filters can be changed during time. The Akai format takes that into account. A sample can span only a few keys instead of the full range. Such a 'zone' can be overlapped with another sample, so you have an acoustic bass and a piano and on the octave where they overlap, playing a key triggers both. That's also part of the format. The sample format says nothing about quality, availability, or how professional you are; it's just that popular formats can be read by a large number of applications so whatever you bought for an older (Akai) hardware sampler will not become obsolete rubbish just because you moved to Kontakt.

indeed. Is the human voice an electric or non-electric instrument? Can you then answer the question for yourself? See, that's why we're puzzled . "Accurate" in recording terms means: - no or as little as possible unwanted background noise (no passing cars, barking dogs, shouting parents or siblings) - no or as little as possible unwanted reverb (reverb is an effect you should add later - much easier to add than to remove) - a faithful representation of the original (no or as little as possible changes - dips and peaks - in frequency). If you want to record a saxophone - which is a fairly loud instrument with quite some upper harmonics - you'll need to have a suitable space to record it. A closet with soundproofing on the walls is an option. Blankets may do the job for a while, too. A bathroom is the least ideal choice (the tiles reflect the sound). Recording stuff in a closet is not uncommon - it all depends on what you have available for room. You'll have to experiment a bit with the most ideal position for the microphone. It depends on what you think sounds best. The microphone is another issue; you have to pick one with the best quality your budget can give you. What your budget is depends. Do you want to record the sax only or more than that - drums, acoustic guitars, vocals, etc.? (all of 'm non-electric by the way). You'll need a pre-amplifier, too. An audio interface wouldn't be excess luxury either; no matter how much you prepare for quality, a noisy on-board soundcard is going to ruin it anyway.